Related Specifications

The following specifications, listed alphabetically, are related to DMARC in various ways.

Authenticated Received Chain (ARC)

ARC preserves initial authentication results across subsequent intermediaries (“hops”) that modify the message and thus will cause email authentication to fail to verify when the message reaches its destination

Allows for relaying of forensic details regarding an authentication failure

Supports reporting of SPF and/or DKIM failures

For SPF, reports the client IP address and the SPF record(s) that were retrieved, producing a “fail” result

For DKIM, reports the canonicalized header and body that produced a failed signature, allowing forensic analysis by the signer to detect why the failure occurred

Also supports ADSP reporting of messages that weren’t signed but should have been

This will be used by DMARC sites for reporting per-message failure details.

An aggregate reporting format is suggested within an appendix of the DMARC specification.

Conditional DKIM Signatures

An extension of DKIM that allows the sender to specify that they are sending messages through an intermediary, and that a valid DKIM signature from that intermediary should also be present when the message reaches its destination.